


The Hands of a Thief and the Heart of a Lion

by ladysisyphus



Category: Alias Smith and Jones
Genre: Cheating at Cards, Gen, Poker, fun with terrifying the youth, hello daddy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:35:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22152610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysisyphus/pseuds/ladysisyphus
Summary: That time Big Jim Santana caught a little shit cheating at cards.
Kudos: 16





	The Hands of a Thief and the Heart of a Lion

It took seeing it happen three times for Big Jim's eyes to catch up with his brain, but when he did, he knew what had to happen next.  
  
It wasn't as though the place was particularly known for honest cards; out here, those were few and far between, and all had the money to hire the security that could help keep such promises. Jim, as a general rule, didn't fret too much about guarantees from the house. With his size and his reputation combined, he wasn't worried about getting too raw of a deal. If anything, he had become complacent -- no, _lazy_ , like a fat old guard dog that had grown more fond of eating table scraps than snapping his teeth. That was part of why it had taken three times of seeing cards showing up where they weren't supposed to be, instead of just one.  
  
Spotting the culprit took no effort at all. The room was busy as hell tonight, packed so tight the ladies could barely move around to get full glasses to the men and empty ones back to the bar. Even so, the cheater stuck out despite his obvious attempts to blend in. He was dressed in a coat two sizes too large for his adolescent frame and had a patch of scrub brush on his upper lips and chin that Jim supposed was on its way to becoming a beard, in another few years or so. He looked too young to drink and too young to smoke, but Jim didn't think that was why he wasn't doing either. No, he suspected the dollar the boy had put down to get into the game had been one of his last.  
  
The first round he sat in on went honestly to the boy, who made a decent bluff on a hand of nothing. The other players at the table had been giving this gawky teenager mean glares from the moment he took the empty chair at the table, but Jim kept his cool, and they followed his lead. A few more hands went by, one of which the boy won big with four sevens. More hands, and then again, this time laying down a full house.  
  
What finally got him was not a failure of the boy's skill. Rather, it was the impossibility of it all. Jim saw the boy make a clumsy reach for his cards, one that could have been written off as drunken carelessness, had the boy been drinking. But Jim had been counting the cards out and in, and so he knew there was no way that when the boy showed his called hand, it could have that six of diamonds in it.  
  
He didn't move, though, not at first. He didn't let a single inch of his expression budge one way or another. He wanted to see it again.  
  
Sure enough, he didn't even have to wait that long. The boy had been smart at first, cautious among the grown-ups, careful not to win too often. But the deck had come to him this time to deal. Instead of passing on his chance and playing an honest round, he'd started dealing seconds, and sure enough, when the time had come to call, he'd had four kings in his hand, more than luck itself strictly would have allowed.  
  
Three other men around the table pushed back from their chairs, and in that moment, the boy's face turned chalk-white. It was the classic cheater's downfall, realizing just a second too late when the room was on to him. In any other cheater, Jim would have chalked it up to arrogance, or maybe pure stupidity. This boy, though, looked like he possessed little of the first and none of the second. He was just green at this game, that was all. Good enough to how to manipulate the deck, inexperienced enough not to know when to read a room. There were lots of things worth getting killed for, Jim knew, but he couldn't conscience adding being a hungry kid to the list.  
  
So Jim moved first, and Jim moved fastest. Before the other _caballeros_ could even get fully to their feet, Jim had the boy's wrist locked in his fist. "You!" he bellowed, making sure the room heard how good and angry he was. "You little yellow cheater! You know what we do here with cheaters, don't you?"  
  
The moon-wide set of the boy's brown eyes let Jim know that, yes, he knew the answer to that question. Satisfied those around him felt like the boy was getting what was coming to him, Jim hauled him to his feet and out the door. The boy barely kept his feet, staggering after Jim's long strides in a pair of boots that were as too-big for him as his coat -- neither of which, Jim wagered, had left their previous owner voluntarily.

To Jim's relief, no one followed them. He was prepared to drag the boy along as far as he needed to get away from any hangers-on, but a short trip was so much the better. He tossed the boy up against the wall of the stable a few buildings down, where a lantern swung above their heads. The boy looked like he was about to wet his pants with terror. Good, Jim thought; that'd make this a lesson he wouldn't soon forget.

Jim shoved his hand into the pocket of his coat, and the boy cowered, plainly expecting the next thing to emerge to be a pistol. Instead, Jim opened his hand and revealed, resting in his palm, a deck of cards. "Show me," he said.

The boy looked at the cards, then at Jim. "Pardon?"

"Show me. What you did in there." Jim shook his head. "Not the dealing seconds, that much was obvious. But that six of diamonds you turned up. How did you do that?"

The boy swallowed hard. "I, um." He cleared his throat, then reached for the cards. He lifted the top one to show them both what it was: a ten of clubs. He put it back down right where it had been before, then pulled his hand away. "Okay, pick up the top card."

Jim did: the four of diamonds. He looked at the boy and raised an eyebrow, and the boy lifted his hand. He'd palmed the card so effortlessly that Jim hadn't noticed. There it was, right between his fingers. Jim snatched the card from him and put it back in the deck, then gave the deck a shuffle. He lifted the top card -- the three of spades -- and put it down. "Do it again."

This time, the boy moved with even greater facility than he had before. It looked for all the world like all he did was touch the top of the deck, but when he drew back his hand, Jim found the king of clubs where the three should have been. "Look, mister, I'm sorry," the boy said. "If you let me go, I swear I'll never do it again in this town. I'll light out of here tonight."

"How?" asked Jim. "You have a horse?"

"I--" The boy looked down at his feet. "No."

"You have a place to stay?"

The boy shook his head.

Jim narrowed his eyes, smirking a little. "Do you know who I am?"

Again, the boy shook his head. Well, wasn't this an interesting treat, to find a place his reputation did not precede him.

"What's your name?"

"Hannibal Heyes," said the boy.

"Well, Hannibal--" Jim retrieved the last card from the boy and put the completed deck back in his pocket, then extended his hand. For a moment, the boy looked skeptical, like he was afraid Jim would start swinging him around again like a misbehaving mule. Jim just waited, though, and at last, Hannibal wrapped his fingers around Jim's palm in a companionable handshake. "They call me Big Jim Santana, and now I'm wondering if you've ever heard of the Devil's Hole Gang."

If Hannibal's eyes had been wide earlier, they swelled to the point of nearly taking over his whole face. How old must he have been -- thirteen, fourteen? Surely no younger than that, though not much older, either. Jim himself had always been sitting on top of a world of trouble when he was that age, and he knew the look of a kid out on his own. Another boy that age, he might have taken in on account of charity, hoping he could earn his keep mucking horses or cleaning game. But this was no charity. Big Jim wanted that mind, and he wanted those hands.

"Come on," said Jim. "I've had enough of cards tonight, anyway." With a smirk, he turned and began walking over to where he'd left his own horse stabled. "So as I see it now, you've got two choices: You can get out of town tonight, without a horse, before those other men from the table come and find you. Or you can ride behind me back to camp and show me what else you can do."

Had Jim understood at the moment how much the response to his offer would change his life? The knowledge that colored hindsight made it difficult to say. But even years later, he would remember clearly the grin that cracked across his face when he realized the boy's footsteps were coming toward him, not walking away. 


End file.
